Friday, March 31, 2006

Alcoholic confusion

It’s bad news for those of us who believe in the J-shaped curve for alcohol. You know the one – the graph which shows that if you’re a teetotaller you have a higher risk of dying than someone who enjoys one or two alcoholic tipples a day. On the other hand, if you’re partial to more – three, four or five drinks a day, your risk of dying climbs exponentially.

Well, apparently those benefits of moderate drinking simply don’t stand up. A new analysis of 54 studies on alcohol and its purported health benefits found that most of the studies did not account for the fact that many of their teetotallers had given up drinking for a reason – because of declining health or medication use. So those abstaining were less healthy anyway than those partaking.

On a more positive note for those enjoying the odd snifter, the researchers aren’t ruling out possible benefits of light drinking. There are just too few error-free studies to tell, they say.Certainly, there are countless studies heralding alcohol’s health benefits. For example: beer could dampen inflammation and fight cancer. And the latest on red wine suggests it may even increase longevity. But heavy drinking inevitably brings tales of woe. For more on drugs and alcohol, see this special report.

Icy doom

Another week, another gloomy climate study, revealing that winter temperatures have risen by over 2°C in the last 30 years in Antarctica. This is really serious stuff as the region holds enough water in its ice to raise sea levels by a whopping 60 metres, if it all melted. But so far, scientists don’t know whether the rise is due to natural variations in Antarctica’s climate system, or due to increases in greenhouse gas emissions.

Nonetheless, even just the idea of Antarctica’s ice shelves cleaving off is pretty scary. Remember that scene in The Day After Tomorrow when the Larsen B ice shelf collapses, leaving Dennis Quaid teetering above an icy abyss?

And bits of the icy continent do keep breaking off. The world’s largest iceberg left poor penguins starving in 2005.

More seriously, there seems to be bad news on the globe's ice almost every week now, warning about how fast Greenland’s glaciers are sinking into the sea and melting, for example. And apparently Greenland is being rocked by more and more "glacial earthquakes".

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Safe sex success

It looked very grim in November 2005 when United Nations figures revealed the number of people infected worldwide with HIV had passed the 40 million mark. The five million cases that year was a record.

In particular, Asian countries such as China and India are thought to be on the verge of mammoth epidemics. Over 5 million Indians are infected in the country and it had the fastest growing epidemic outside South Africa in 2005.

But there's now some welcome good news. Aggressive Indian safe sex campaigns are having a surprisingly large effect on infection rates. These have dropped by a third in south India, where 75% of the nation's infected people live. The development is especially encouraging given the terrible stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS.

Fishy mating dilemma

A new lab study reveals that when oxygen levels in water are low, the sex ratio of zebrafish can go awry, leaving as few as one female to every three baby males. Even these scant females could have weirdly high levels of testosterone. This is pretty scary, because these low oxygen "dead zones" – often caused by fertilisers and other pollutants - cover hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of seas and lakes.

Crucifying question

In the run up to Easter, what more fascinatingly grisly thing could you ponder than how the hideous Roman practice of crucifixion caused death – and in particular how Jesus himself was nailed to the cross.

A newly published archaeological study hints that Jesus may have been hammered to the cross with his knees bent and his ankles either side of the wooden upright – rather than the more traditional image of both his feet being in front. And that's pretty much the same explanation we published back in 1995.

Best of the rest

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Fetus-in-fetus-in-fetus

It's an extraordinary, and rather gruesome, case. A two-month-old girl in Pakistan has had the dead remains of two siblings removed from within her, according to reports.

The mother originally carried triplets. But two ended up growing inside the other, where they perished, aged about four months and weighing two pounds together. You can see X-rays and images of the surviving girl here.

But, whilst very unusual, such "fetus-in-fetu" cases are not unheard of. The online medical journal library has 122 papers on such cases and one cites the chances of it happening as 1 in 500,000.

Even rarer are human chimeras, where a single person is a genetic mixture of two non-identical twins that fused in the womb. Only 30 such cases are known. But at least one in 20 of us shared the womb with a twin that perished before birth – that means 7 million twinless twins are born each year.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Facing fear

Afraid to face your fears? Perhaps you don’t have to. Scientists may have found a way to treat phobias without making people confront their terrors – inject them with the stress hormone cortisol.

Although this sounds counterintuitive, the stress hormone did seem to reduce fear levels in arachnophobes when they were faced with spiders. It also helped people with a phobia of social situations to go through a mock job interview and then undergo a mental arithmetic test.

But paradoxical methods to fight fear have been investigated before. US researchers found treating mice with a bark extract which induces severe anxiety was more effective in quelling their fears than a known anxiety-reducing drug used to treat panic disorders.

There may be more fun ways to fight your fears though. Playing popular computer games, which harness virtual reality, could help phobic patients to face the source of their terrors in a controlled, safe environment.

Birth pill to cut cancer?

“Sexual intercourse beganIn nineteen sixty-three(which was rather late for me) -Between the end of the Chatterley banAnd the Beatles' first LP.”Philip Larkin

The contraceptive pill may have started a sexual revolution almost half a century ago (too late for the poet Philip Larkin), but now scientists are saying that one such pill may also cut cancer in the future.

At a gathering of scientists in London, UK, to mark the 50th anniversary of the first clinical trials of the oral contraceptive pill, David Baird, at the University of Edinburgh, revealed that a new pill reduced the risk of breast cancer in animal tests.

This is the opposite of the commonly held view that the oral combined contraceptive pill actually increases the risk of breast cancer, although previous studies have given conflicting results on this.

Baird’s pill, though, is based on the controversial abortion pill RU486, also known as mifepristone. The pill has been studied as a once-a-month contraceptive before. But to work in a way that helps prevent cancer, the new pill would stop monthly periods completely – an idea which leaves some doctors sceptical.

"Once you start talking about stopping the action of the ovaries, you then start looking at the whole hormonal picture, and that is when you think: what is this doing to long-term health?" Dr Rosemary Leonard

Monday, March 27, 2006

Skull duggery

An almost-complete Homo erectus skull has been unearthed in Ethiopia (see map for location). It's a fantastic find and has prompted use of the phrase that accompanies every such fossil – the "missing link". This is second only to "holy grail" in terms overuse in science journalism. But there's a reason for this hyperbole – there are in fact very few of these fossils at all. Every one is precious and is likely to reveal new insights.

Homo erectus is the best candidate for the species that gave rise to Homo sapiens, i.e. you and me. H. erectus died out sometime between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago, while H. sapiens may have arisen as early as 300,000 years ago.

The new skull, remarkably intact, is between 250,000 and 500,000 years old, a critical time of transition. The face and cranium are recognisably different from that of modern humans but also bears unmistakable anatomical evidence of belonging to our ancestry, say the researchers.

The last major H. erectus find was the remnants of a surprisingly petite skull revealed in July 2004. Those belonged to one of the first human ancestors to walk on two legs abut 930,000 years ago and revealed the great physical diversity among these prehistoric populations. The oldest human remains were also discovered recently and are about 160,000 years old. But the most astonishing in the last few years was the "hobbit" species that co-existed with humans until incredibly recently.

(Image: The new hominid skull is held by Asahmed Humet, who discovered the fossil on 16 February 2006. Credit: Sileshi Semaw/Stone Age Institute)

Everyone can get vCJD

Everyone could be susceptible to the human form of mad cow disease (vCJD), according to new research. Not surprisingly, it's prompted some alarming headlines. In fact, much of the science is already known.

It all comes down to genetic variations in people that make them more or less susceptible to vCJD. The variations occur in the genes that make the prion protein that is mutated by vCJD. About 40% of people have the MM variation, about 10% have VV and half have the hybrid MV.

The new mice studies show that vCJD can be transmitted to all three genotypes, but with different incubation times and characteristics. The MM combination is least protective – all but one of the known victims of vCJD so far have been MM. The other combinations seem to make the incubation time much longer, which is good news for individuals – they will die of something else before the horrible symptoms manifest.

But it's not good news for the population overall as it means people will silently carry vCJD for a long time, and possibly pass it on via blood transfusions or other routes. Precautions can be taken to prevent this but no measures will be foolproof until a diagnostic test is developed.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Crash bump-starts a heart

You'd imagine that crashing your car in the seconds after suffering a heart attack could only make things worse. But for 77-year-old medical professor Ronald Mann it turned out to be a life saver."I had the kind of heart attack that causes people to drop dead. I lost consciousness within a few seconds. My front-seat passenger tried to grab the handbrake but my car crashed into a tree," he recalls.As it happened, the crash propelled Ronald into his steering wheel with such force that it split in two, but shocked his heart back into action – thank goodness for the 10-year-old Honda wasn't packing any airbags."Perversely, the crash saved my life. If my cardiac arrest has occurred in a different situation – out walking or something like that – I would not be here."

"It's memorable as the crash gave life rather than took it away. It's a nice story." Police constable Caroline Lowe, who attended the crash

Ronald has now had a pacemaker fitted and a defibrillator implanted which can shock his heart back into rhythm when needed. In rare cases, defibrillators can go off when they shouldn't, but a new technology aims to make them even safer. And while a steering wheel in the chest can save a life, a baseball impact in the chest can kill without even leaving a bruise…

Undesired arousal

It's a syndrome that causes some to snigger, but for those women affected, it can be a living hell. Persistent sexual arousal syndrome (PSAS) only affects females, and manifests itself as non-stop sexual arousal that cannot be satisfied by orgasm – and it can last for months at a time.

Doctors are calling for more research into the "distressing and perplexing condition" in a report published in the International Journal of STD & AIDS.

Often embarrassed and humiliated, sufferers become physically aroused – the labia, vulva and clitoris become engorged with blood – in the absence of actual sexual interest. "But due to the reluctance of women to come forward we are unsure how common the problem is," says report co-author David Goldmeier of St Mary's Hospital in London, UK.

Regarding the female orgasm, some research has suggested that genes play a key role in a woman's ability to achieve them, while another study suggests that the contraceptive pill can dull desire for ever.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Don't blame the building

Fungi, bacteria, dust, poor ventilation and high noise – not the sort of thing you want at work. But "sick building syndrome" doesn't exist, according to a new study – the blame in fact lies bad managers.

The research was pretty smart. It asked 4000 civil servants working in 44 different buildings across in London, UK, about headaches, coughs, itchy eyes, runny noses and so on. It then sent in inspectors to check every environmental detail of the offices. And there was no correlation between the sick building symptoms and buildings that were actually "sick". What did correlate was people reporting job stress and lack of support.

The ultimate old-timer

Adwaitya – "the only one" – had lived in Kolkata Zoo since 1875. Records show the creature was born in 1750, but there some have claimed he was born 45 years earlier. The zoo will use carbon-dating to settle the issue.

All this rather conflicts with our 2004 story saying the world's oldest known living animal is Harriet, a giant Galapagos tortoise living in the Australia Zoo in Beerwah, Queensland, who recently celebrated her 173rd birthday that year.

Harriet's claim to fame is that she is widely thought to have been plucked from her island home by none other than Charles Darwin, who took her as a personal pet during the voyage of HMS Beagle in 1835.

Planetary pole flip

Eons may pass, but the Earth remembers. So say Italian scientists studying one of the most mysterious natural phenomena – the flipping of the Earth’s geomagnetic poles. Hundreds of times over the last 160 million years, the Earth’s magnetic field has reversed, causing the magnetic poles to switch over. It had been thought that this event was random, but now researchers say that this might not be the case. Polarity reversals seem to occur in clusters, they say, indicating some kind of “memory” of previous events.

It has been 780,000 years since the last reversal, so we may be long overdue one. But will birds and planes plummet from the sky? And lethal radiation from space bombard the Earth, as it drops its protective magnetic shield during the reversal?

The Hollywood movie, The Core (2003), might have us believe that a change in the Earth’s electromagnetic field will leave us in trouble. But some scientists say that solar winds might actually come to the rescue, swaddling the planet in a protective blanket. (Image: NASA)

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Drug-related gambling?

Turning some patients into “obsessive pleasure seekers” is not a side effect you’d expect from a serious drug designed to treat a serious illness. But this adverse reaction is what some patients taking medication for Parkinson’s disease are experiencing, US researchers suggest

Drugs for the degenerative illness – which causes tremors and difficulties in movement – work by replenishing dopamine, a natural chemical in the brain.

Dopamine is important in the way the brain controls movement, but is also a key chemical associated with pleasure – be it sex, food, certain illicit drugs, or gambling.

Researchers at the US Food and Drug Administration are now looking into whether Parkinson’s drugs are associated with compulsive gambling or not, but there are no firm links so far.

But the idea that dopamine-boosting drugs might make a small proportion of seniors with Parkinson’s develop ruinous habits is not new. In 2003, doctors in casino-heavy Arizona noticed that a handful of their Parkinson’s patients suddenly developed new gambling problems after their medication was increased. Their subsequent study uncovered distressing tales of newly developed profligacy, leading to financial hardship.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Uneven risk

Symmetry has often been linked to beauty – now it seems to reduce the risk of breast cancer. A new study has found women with different-sized breasts are more likely to develop breast cancer than their more symmetrical peers. The researchers examined the mammograms of about 500 women, half of whom went onto develop breast cancer.

They found the risk of developing the life-threatening condition increased by 50% for each 100-millilitre difference in breast volume. The average breast in the study was about 500 ml, so a 100 ml variation is quite a difference, the researchers stress. But only 1% of subjects had "perfect" breasts.

"Breast asymmetry should not be considered in isolation, it is important to consider a woman's entire risk profile before assessing her breast cancer risk." Lead researcher Dr Diane Scutt

Humans are basically symmetrical creatures, externally at least, and some researchers suggest asymmetry may be linked to developmental disturbances – a reduction in general robustness.

Brazil nutty

It was going to take some serious lateral thinking to solve the case of the vanishing Amazonian Brazil nuts. And what could be a more lateral thought than dental floss?

The tasty nut – which is not technically a nut at all, but a seed – is the only traded seed crop collected exclusively from natural forests. But harvests are shrinking and farmers need to know where their nuts are disappearing to, if they hope to save their beleaguered industry, which has been under threat for some years.

Now, in a cunning ploy, the British Ecological Society and the Brazilian Research Council are to import 10,000 metres of dental floss. The idea is to put 2500 Brazil nut fruits together, each holding seeds which are tethered by dental floss to a fluorescent flag fixed in the ground. When taken and buried by the toothy Agouti – a kind of blown-up guinea pig that eats Brazil nuts – the farmers can trace the seed's path of propagation, and perhaps learn better how to manage their wild stock in future.

It's an intriguing idea. But I'm not sure about turning the Amazonian forest into an enormous, tangled spider's web of floss. And I fear they could inadvertently create a super-race of abseiling Agouti, with incredibly clean teeth. (Image: Carlos Peres)

Friday, March 17, 2006

Sick of the Atkins diet?

The frequently controversial Atkins diet has come under more fire today, with news reported in The Lancet that a 40-year-old obese woman developed a potentially deadly blood disorder after rigorously adhering to the low-carb diet for a month.

After living on just meat, cheese, and salads, the woman lost 9 kilograms (20 pounds), but developed ketoacidosis, where dangerous levels of acids called ketones build up in the blood. These are usually produced in the liver when insulin levels fall due to starvation or diabetes. The US woman was taken to hospital after vomiting six times a day and becoming increasingly short of breath.

Atkins advocates, not entirely surprisingly, disagree with the US doctors' opinion on the woman's ill health: "Vomiting, from a clinical problem which isn't triggered by diet, would have led to the ketoacidosis," said Abby Bloch of the Atkins Foundation.

Drug trial trouble

It's been a very bad week for drug trials. First all six patients given an experimental drug in the UK suffer very serious side effects. Now 11 patients are reported to have died in Japan during final trials of an Alzheimer's drug, called Aricept. The drug was being tested in patients with vascular dementia. This is the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer's – which is caused by stroke or diseased blood vessels.

Taking a pill per day for 24 weeks, 11 of the 648 people testing the drug died, compared to no deaths among the 326 patients receiving placebos. The deaths among the test group were not actually unexpected – most of those involved in the study had a history of history of stroke or heart disease. Rather, it was the lack of deaths in the placebo group that seemed anomalous, since the death rate among placebo subjects in previous trials was around 2%.

"This study is a concern and should be looked at, but we shouldn't get alarmist quite yet. For people who are treating their loved ones with Aricept, I don't want them to be overly scared." - Rudolph Tanzi, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School

Thursday, March 16, 2006

T. rex, the Olympic sprinter

Everyone knows how a Tyrannosaurus rex runs – and especially when chasing a jeep containing Hollywood star Jeff Goldblum. But for those who'd prefer more science and less Spielberg, dinosaur locomotion experts John Hutchinson and Stephen Gatesy have pieced together some impressive bone simulations of a dead rex walking and, more impressively, running at a zippy 10 metres per second. And here he is with his skin on. And they have a load more movies and images, here.

The simulations, reported in Nature, were no mean feat. It's incredibly hard to recreate the movement of a creature that's been dead for eons. For example, assuming T. rex's four leg joints, from hip to toe, could all move through 90°, the number of possible movement permutations quickly zooms past 50 million. But by the sharp application of bio-dynamics, an understanding of dinosaurs' modern day descendants (birds) and bearing info from fossilised dino-footprints in mind, the researchers are happy they've produced a well-educated guess.

Incidently, did you know T. rex's avoided extinction and hung around for a few million years to dine on humans, they would not have had the pleasure of hearing their dinner scream? And there's more dino-action in our special report. (Images and video: Hutchinson & Gatesy)

Ultrasonic frogs

Well, don't be fooled by their classic frog noises, they are simply a cover for secret conversations which, research now reveals, take place in the ultrasonic range, beyond the hearing of mere human ears. Researchers think they use these frequencies – above 20 kilohertz – to cut through the din of their riverbank habitat.

But here's the thing: the female frogs can't hear those frequencies either! Imagine if human men could talk exclusively to each other like that. It would certainly make it easier to cheat at cards…

But these frogs aren't alone with their ultrasonic skills. Recently male mice have been discovered performing ultrasonic serenades to their would-be lovers. Check out some serious high-pitched crooning, here. And here are a load more animals with a variety of super powers.

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Heart of the matter

I hope the partial reversal of artery clogging claimed by a study of the statin rosuvastatin is proved real by future research. It could for once justify the over-used phrase "miracle cure", by giving hope to people with furred-up arteries that their condition could be treated, rather than just prevented from getting worse.

But it's fairly clear that there is a lot of work needed before we get to that point. First of all the study was small, just 349 patients in the final analysis – you need many thousands. Second, though the study showed a reduction of up to 9% in arterial plaques, it provided no evidence of a reduced risk of heart attack or stroke.

Thirdly, there are unproven concerns about possible side effects, such as muscle damage. That issue led to the withdrawal of a different statin called Baycol. And the new study used the highest doses approved for rosuvastatin.

Lastly, the study was funded by the drug's manufacturer AstraZeneca, which calls it Crestor. This does not mean the study is necessarily flawed. But since previous research has found that drug-company-funded studies are four times more likely to report positive findings than those funded from other sources, it's worth waiting to see if this hopeful little trial develops into something truly transformative for heart patients. (Image: Luke Walker)

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Antibiotic to cheat justice?

“It's like a James Bond story,” said top Dutch toxicologist Donald Uges on Monday. Indeed, what he suggests does sound like the conspiratorial plot of a political intrigue.

Uges claims that the former Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, on trial in The Hague for genocide and war crimes, and found dead in his cell on Saturday, manipulated his own medication to fake a medical condition which may then have played a part in the heart attack which killed him.

The toxicologist had been consulted earlier in 2006, when the cocktail of drugs Milosevic was taking for his high blood pressure was having no effect. Uges suspected, and found, an antibiotic called rifampicin – used to treat tuberculosis and leprosy – in Milosevic’s blood. A side-effect of the antibiotic is that it activates enzymes in the liver, so his blood pressure drugs might have been quickly broken down and had no effect.

“I deeply regret the death of Slobodan Milosevic. It deprives the victims of the justice they need and deserve.” – prosecutor, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

The former Yugoslav leader, just 40 hours from the completion of his defence case, himself claimed he was being poisoned. Uges’s theory is that Milosevic was using rifampicin so that he could claim he was not being treated properly by Dutch doctors and would be transferred to Moscow.

Political poisonings – self-inflicted or otherwise – are not just the stuff of history books. Ukraine’s charismatic leader, Vitkor Yuschenko, may have lost more than his good looks after he was allegedly poisoned with dioxins before Ukraine’s presidential elections in 2004.

Lonesome runners

I always knew it. Exercising on your own is bad for you – well, at least in rats. US scientists have shown that rats which workout in company, running on their exercise wheels, boost their brain cells. But rats exercising on their own, not only don’t grow more brain cells, but they appear to suffer from stress as well.

However, one bit of the study leaves me unconvinced. The lone runners had already spent a week in solitary confinement anyway, while the sociable joggers were allowed to carry on hanging out together. No wonder the poor lonesome rats were stressed.

Personally, I find the only way to exercise is with friends, and the promise of a nice, long pub lunch at the end of it… But seriously, exercise can work wonders. One study showed that it cuts the risk of dementia in the over 65s by 40%. And a recent study showed that pregnant mice which exercised boosted the brains of their babies.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Space: Room with a view

Do you dream of the wide-open spaces? Just want to get away from it all – literally? Then you have a choice. You can apply to become an astronaut, or hand over $20 million in cash to hitch a ride to the space station on a Russian Soyuz rocket.

Alas, the next batch of blast-offs in the calendar won't be any use to the budget traveller, unless that budget runs to several hundred thousand dollars: Virgin Galactic's spaceships plan to start blasting off on brief sub-orbital flights from 2010.

In the meantime, for wannabe astronauts that don't want to leave their wallets completely weightless, $6000 buys you a four-day trip to the Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City east of Moscow, Russia, and includes zero-gravity simulation flights. Anyone for a ride on the "vomit comet"?

Multi-tasking tipple

Barely a week goes by without finding out that red wine gives you, say, X-ray vision, or increases the lifespan of, say, antelopes.

Previous studies have suggested that the polyphenols in red wine may help to cut inflammation, and possibly the risk of both cancer and heart disease. But this week, it seems that the wonder-compounds help fight gum disease, too, by blocking production of free radical molecules – which can damage gum tissue if allowed to run rampant. Of course, the experts are quick to point out that red wine is not really a path to oral health – brushing twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste is still the way to go.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Veins, planes, and immobilisation

There's more to the scourge of long-haul travel – deep vein thrombosis – than meets the eye, new research has revealed. Sitting still for long periods is not enough, by itself, to explain why passengers are at increased risk of developing potentially deadly blood clots during flights.

A Dutch study looked at the same 71 people in three different 8-hour situations: a long-haul flight, a cinema-based movie marathon, and a normal day's activity. They took regular blood samples and discovered increased concentrations of the chemicals that indicate clotting activity only in the flight scenario – and especially in people with other risk factors for DVT.

Exactly what is increasing the risk in the air remains unclear, but there can only be so many candidates in the frame. Ruling out airline food – bad though it may be – the smart money is on low cabin pressure and oxygen levels.

"Currently the only evidence we have is that immobility is the most important factor, but a number of us have suspected for a long time that there must be other factors having an effect." - Mr John Scurr, consultant general and vascular surgeon at the Lister Hospital in London

To help avoid DVT, how about a smart aircraft seat that alerts you if you haven't been fidgeting enough? And if you spend hour after hour immersed in virtual worlds at your computer, maybe you should be worrying about "e-Thrombosis".

That's a (fishy) wrap!

The latest innovation from Japan, the country that loves fish in all its forms – a food-wrap film made of fish meal. It's edible, it's biodegradable. Is there nothing fish can't do, besides tap-dance? Check out the story (NikkeiNet Interactive – paid subscription required).

I can't help wondering over the wisdom of wrapping food in… erm… food. If you're going to eat the film as well, then surely you'd need to wrap that in something too. Why not just wrap your food in pastry in the first place?

In actual fact, the film will probably be turned into sachets containing flavourings for instant noodle products. They could simply be thrown into the boiling water, where they would dissolve completely, releasing the MSG-based contents within.

And if you can eat fishy film, why not eat some edible paper with sushi flavourings printed onto it instead? Forget takeout, eat a print-out.

But innovations aside, things aren't all rosy in the fishpond right now. Levels of toxic mercury in sushi served in some top restaurants in Los Angeles have just been found to contain nearly twice the recommended limit, possibly leading to the overstatement of the year (so far).

"Eating sushi has become the new Russian roulette." – Eli Saddler, gotmercury.org

You read it here first

The most distant gamma ray burst ever was first reported by New Scientist Space in September 2005, with video. A scientific paper on the find has now been published in Nature, prompting a new burst of news coverage.

And a new rodent species, discovered being eaten as snack in Laos, has also now been written up (if not eaten up) by scientists. New Scientist first ran the story on its discovery in May 2005 – the latest coverage is here. Scientists now believe the rodent is an example of the “Lazarus effect” – a living member of a family of mammals thought to have gone extinct 11 million years ago.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Don't weight and see

While the young have-nots of the world go hungry, the haves are getting fat. It's a scary picture: the epidemic of childhood obesity is ballooning across the developed world. Obesity across the European Union has leapt by almost 50% since the late 1990s, and 10% of all EU children will be obese by 2010, according to new reports – more than double previous estimates.

In Sweden, for example, the number of overweight 7-year-olds jumped from 8% to 21% between 1989 and 2003. In a bid to stem the tide, the government is recommending that all 4-year-olds be screened, hunting for those most predisposed to becoming overweight.

"Today's children will be the first generation in modern times to have an expected lifespan that is shorter than that of their parents' generation." – Claude Marcus, head of Sweden's Center for Child Obesity in Stockholm's Karolinska Hospital

The problem, like more and more waistlines, is widespread. But at least some consumers are beginning to see sense. In the US, sales of soft drinks – known to some as liquid candy – have dropped for the first time in 20 years, down 0.7%, to a mere 10.2 billion cases.

Look, up in the sky!

What's 1 mile wide, swings in an ellipse around the Sun, and came within a cosmic hair's breadth – a mere 200 million miles – of smashing into Earth last week? That's right, asteroid 2000 PN9.

It was spotted by amateur astronomer Bob Forrest using a 16-inch telescope and digital video camera. Watch Bob's video (mpeg format) of the asteroid zipping across the night sky. If you want to look at the asteroid's orbit, past or future, check out NASA's interactive orbit graphic (set the date for 6 March 2006 to see it flash by Earth). But don't worry, 2000 PN9 has no immediate plans to hit Earth.

Another asteroid making headlines recently was Itokawa, visited briefly by Japan's Hayabusa probe last year in order to collect the first ever asteroid rock sample. Although the mission turned into a catalogue of disaster, just this week Japan's space agency, JAXA, has reported renewed contact with the probe. It may limp home yet.

The good news is that NASA's recent Stardust mission, to collect particles from the tail of Comet Wild 2, worked like a dream and brought back a mother lode of comet dust.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Hairy lobster

Its silky blond hair looks pretty seductive – until you see the very large claws sticking out at the end. The good news is that the weird beast couldn’t catch you if it wanted to – it is blind.

The new lobster is in fact so strange that it has been given its own family and genus - Kiwa hirsuta. The 15-cm-long (6 inch) beast was found 2300 metres (7540 feet) under the South Pacific, 900 miles south of Easter Island. Many new species are plucked from the ocean each year, but scientists say it is unusual to find one in need of a new family name, or indeed a haircut.

Young and horny

It had a shortened face and big eyes, attributes that have made babies lovable throughout the ages. But only a mother could really love this fearsome infant Triceratops, with all its horns and frills.

The smallest Triceratops skull ever found is now on display at the University of California, Berkeley, US, and written up by UCB's Mark Goodwin in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

It is probably from a year-old three-foot-long baby that lived about 68 million years ago. But the baby dinosaur would be dwarfed by the six-foot-plus skull of a mature Triceratops.

Yet despite the pup's size, its remains are telling Goodwin a lot about how dinosaurs grew and the purpose of their head ornaments. Since the horns and frill are present from a very early age, it is unlikely they were used exclusively for sexual display. Instead, they may have been most important for species recognition.

Scrolling back the years

Here's an idea. Take very fragile and ancient Buddhist scrolls, soak them in hexane, chloroform or methanol and then wash with acids and alkalis. Then, for the coup de grace, slap the birch bark scroll in a particle accelerator.

The result? Not paper mush, but new radiocarbon dates for the scrolls – dubbed the "Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism". The chemicals are used to clean impurities from the samples before accelerator mass spectrometry gives the ratio of carbon isotopes and hence the date. You can see an image of a similar scroll, here.

One set of scrolls is dated at 130 to 250 AD. According to Mark Allon, at the University of Sydney: "Buddhism was originally an oral tradition but little is known about how it developed from spoken word to written word, so the work will give us a unique insight into the development of Buddhist literature."

The work is written up in Velocity, the print magazine of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. You can read how sodium nitrate came to the aid of another Buddhist scroll, the Dunhuang Diamond Sutra, here.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Missing link?

A unique family, in which five brothers and sisters can only walk naturally on all fours, is being claimed as a living “missing link” to the time when our ancient ancestors switched to walking upright. But I'm not so sure.

The family in rural Turkey is being featured in a BBC documentary. Three of the family’s 19 children can only walk on all fours, while another daughter and son can only occasionally walk on two feet. Both parents walk normally, but they are closely related and so are thought to have passed on a unique combination of genes to their children.

The quadruped children, aged 18 to 34, all have a genetic defect which has caused damage to the brain’s cerebellum, which controls balance and movement.

So while some scientists in the programme argue they are genetic throwbacks, I suspect it's more likely that this is an extremely rare and unfortunate genetic accident. Every once in a while, nature brings together incredibly rare combinations of genes, or new gene forms spontaneously arise. A recent programme on the UK’s Channel 4 revealed the first family to have several children with a rare ageing disease called progeria, which makes children look like 80-year-olds. In this instance, the gene change appeared to be an entirely new one compared with the known mutation.

Also, for our ancestors to switch to bipedalism, many skeletal changes would have been needed. In fact, the ability to run long-distances may have been a more significant point in our evolution, suggest some researchers. Thanks to the BBC for the images.

“They walk like animals, and that’s very disturbing at first. But we were also very moved by this family’s tremendous warmth and humanity.” Jemima Harrison, Passionate Productions

Mini bird, maxi memory

Who said birds were... erm... birdbrained? The hummingbird has a superb memory of where to find its dinner, despite having a brain the size of a rice grain. The new study shows the diminutive bird can remember exactly which flowers it has visited to drink from, and when. It can then work out the best time to revisit a flower after it has replenished its nectar.

But animals don’t need to be big to be brainy when it comes to food. Ants can take on the role of teacher to lead another ant to a snack. And part of the grey squirrel's edge over the red squirrel may be that it is a craftier thief.

Monday, March 06, 2006

Brain hit-and-run

A "hit-and-run injury" to the brain could be the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome, say scientists. They followed patients who did not recover quickly from glandular fever, which is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. Despite no trace of the virus in their bodies after 12 months, the patients were still dogged by extreme fatigue, suggesting the function of their brains had been altered by the initial infection.

It's clearly a complex area where much remains to be understood. This story says chronic fatigue is not all in the mind, as differences in gene expression are found in the immune cells of those affected, while other work has found that the exhaustion some athletes feel is not caused by over-worked muscles but by a molecule in the mind. (Image: Catherine Leconte)

Vanilla dung

Looking for a good use of cow dung doesn't seem that hard to me – you'd think it was a pretty good fertiliser. But apparently not – scientists have now worked out how to produce vanillin from the waste.

Mayu Yamamoto, at the International Medical Center of Japan, told AFP "this component is exactly the same [as that used for flavouring] but it would be difficult for people to accept it in food, given the recent rules of disclosing the origins of ingredients".

On the plus side, she says, vanillin can be made from dung for half the cost of making vanillin out of vanilla beans. The team aims to have a machine capable of handling several tonnes of cow faeces a day in use within three years. But back in 1998, researchers were already modifying soil bugs to produce vanillin.

Another team in Tokyo have worked out how to use high pressure and heat to turn cattle dung into gasoline. They claim they can extract about 1% of the fuel by weight, and that Japanese herds produce about 550,000 tonnes of waste a year. Which means 5500 tonnes of fuel if every last cow pat is collected and used – I doubt the oil companies are getting nervous quite yet. For a really "out there" idea, check out the poop-powered space station.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Ice spy, with satellite eyes

I can't really picture what 152 cubic kilometres of ice looks like, but it feels pretty big. And that's the amount of ice lost from the Antarctic ice cap each year between 2002 and 2005, according to an innovative satellite study. It's a wake-up call too, as many scientists expected the continent would gain ice this century as climate change caused snowfall to increase.

The new information comes from a pair of satellites, called GRACE (Gravity Recover and Climate Experiment), which assessed the ice loss using the new technique of gravity measurements. Changes in the size of the ice sheet cause the orbits of the satellites to differ by a tiny but detectable amount.

Antarctica contains more than 90% of the world's ice, and its western ice sheet, previously assumed to be stable, is starting to collapse, scientists have warned.

"This is the first study to indicate the total mass of the Antarctic ice sheet is in significant decline." - Isabella Velicogna, CIRES, Colorado

Whales hooked on easy pickings

The idea that "there's no such thing as a free lunch" appears not to apply to sperm whales in the Gulf of Alaska. Now legally protected from hunters, the canny creatures have learned the link between boat-engine noise and miles-long fishing lines loaded with tasty, and valuable, sablefish.

As fishermen start reeling in their miles of lines, their boat engines operate in a characteristic sporadic pattern – and it's music to sperm whale ears. The amount of fish taken, or left mangled on the line, is relatively small, but the numbers are increasing.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Panda playtime

It's a scene to melt even the iciest of hearts – a playground full of frolicking pandas. It's the first day of "kindergarten" for 16 baby pandas at the China's Wolong Giant Panda Breeding and Research Centre in Sichuan province. By the looks of this video clip, they're loving every minute of it.It seems panda's prefer to eat shoots, and leave reproduction to the rest of the animal kingdom. So this unique centre has been designed to get the famously shy creatures to interact as closely as possible, building their social skills and boosting their chances of successfully wooing a mate when they grow up.Low numbers of wild giant pandas in China have been a worry in recent decades, though last year a new count revealed a population on the rise. But it's not good news for some captive pandas, as many of the country's zoos seem to have been neglecting their "poster-child" bears.

Hwang in there

In a new twist to the increasingly sorry tale of Woo Suk Hwang, once hailed as South Korea's "King of Cloning", 4000 of the research fraudster's supporters took to the streets, saying he should be allowed to resume his research. The rally followed reports that investigators into his fraudulent experiments are to summon him for questioning on Thursday.

Hwang's "landmark" studies put South Korean science on the map, and catapulted him to national stardom – he was his country's pride. Now, despite obtaining human eggs in a dubious fashion, giving research money to politicians, failing to account for millions of dollars in funding and then faking his experimental results, some of this adulation seems to have stuck.

It was in 2005 that Hwang announced stunning results from his stem cell research, claiming to have created 11 patient-specific stem cell lines. The medical implications of such a breakthrough were enormous. Unfortunately, the results were stunning only for their sheer audacity.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Celebrity squid

A giant squid called Archie is causing quite a stir at London’s Natural History Museum in the UK. The 8.62 metre-long behemoth was caught by a trawler off the coast of the Falkland Islands, it is one of the biggest and most complete specimens ever found. Giant squid (Architeuthis dux) are mysterious creatures which live in waters as deep as 1000 metres. Rarely seen, they may be the fearsome sea monsters that fuelled old mariners’ tales of terrifying attacks, as these pictures show.

Indeed, the giant squid has brushed with celebrity. Archie was painstakingly defrosted and preserved, with a little advice from the modern artist Damien Hirst, who told scientists where they could purchase specially designed display tanks for preserving animals. To see the team preparing the squid (and it’s not calamari), click here.

And another giant squid also recently fell into the hands of controversial German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, who was going to preserve it using the "plastination" technique he uses for human bodies.

Only ourselves to blame?

Humankind’s activities are the only reason for current major changes in the Earth’s climate. That is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected to conclude in a draft report to be sent to governments next month, according to leaked information. Previously the panel had said greenhouse gas emissions were only "probably" to blame.

The contentious conclusion is likely to add more fossil fuel to the fierce ongoing debate. Getting at the truth about climate change has been complicated further by recent allegations that the US has been muzzling its climate scientists.

But wherever the blame lies, the future does not look good. A worst-case scenario could see the Earth heat up by an average of 13°C. This would wipe out the rainforests, giving the Arctic frost-free winters and turning London into a balmy Cairo – except that by then London will have been swallowed up by the 11-metre rise in sea levels. To read more about the debate, see our special report.

"The measurements from the natural world on all parts of the globe have been anomalous over the past decade,” said a secret source. "If a few were out of kilter we wouldn't be too worried because the Earth changes naturally. But the fact that they are virtually all out of kilter makes us very concerned." - BBC